Back in the day Village Voice actually was a pretty decent paper. Yes, many old timers considered it "pornographic" or whatever, but his was mostly because it covered things many mainstream NYC newspapers didn't such as gays. Of course the paper was based in and did extensive coverage of Greenwich Village/downtown, Chelsea, etc... which to many New Yorkers were areas full of "freaks" or whatever.
The late Mr. Wayne Barrett along with a good number of great true "New York City" journalists worked for the VV.
Of course back in the day if you wanted to know about the music/jazz/club etc... scene, which the Village was famous for, you read the VV.
VV started going down hill when it began to concentrate more on their "ahem" personal adverts including escorts. The Voice always had an extensive personal and classified section, but the escort thing was meant to go toe to toe with the (now defunct) Screw Magazine. VV upped the ante then it began being free in Manhattan. That caused then owner of Screw Magazine to have a fit; he sued or at least waged a war against VV's owners claiming unfair business practices/competition.
Village Voice was not only charged the hoes and trannies less for their adverts, but the content wasn't that much different than the same ads those prossies put into Screw. Yet Screw as a porn mag so only those over the age of 18 could purchase and it was kept behind the counter/otherwise off limits. OTOH the VV was sold out front and or simply given away free.
Al Goldstein (owner of Screw) did manage to get Starbucks and some other outlets to stop distributing VV IIRC because of the escort ad thing. It was all too little to late as eventually Screw was put out of business in large part due to escort ads moving over to VV.
For years people could tell there was a trans, hoe, or whatever working indoor prostitution in their building because of the discarded copies of either Screw or VV in lobby/common areas.
Long story short whatever good associations the VV once had, by the 2000's it was largely considered only read by those looking for a prostitute.
This article gives a pretty good summation of the founding and history of Village Voice.
It Took a Village - The New Yorker
For the record Village Voice was once part of the same media group that owned Backpage, another publication/website famous for prossing adverts.
Village Voice Management Buyout Leaves Backpage.com Behind | Media - AdAge
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